Neighborhoods

Free speech is the oxygen of the blogosphere. Blogs, tweets and Facebook posts couldn't have the profound influence they have rightfully earned in our new and diverse marketplace of ideas without a robust freedom to debate, to challenge, and even to be outrageous. So it's hardly surprising that when a congressional debate about protecting confidential sources mentions blogs, it touches a nerve.

That debate concerned the Free Flow of Information Act, which was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last month on a bipartisan, 13-5 vote. If passed by Congress, the Act would be the first statute to protect journalists from being forced to identify their confidential sources in federal court. It would build on the protections of the First Amendment (because no act of Congress, of course, can minimize those rights) and fix a serious bug in our constitutional system -- multiple federal courts now have said that the only way for reporters to protect a confidential source is to go to prison indefinitely. Many of our federal courts have held that the First Amendment simply does not allow a reporter to protect a confidential source. That's hardly a solution that reflects our country's global leadership in free expression. Although 48 states and the District of Columbia already provide such protection in state courts, Congress has never passed a federal shield law. So the Judiciary Committee's vote should give journalists reason for optimism, as Emily Bazelon of Slate has so persuasively described.

Darren Dattalo is a real estate agent at Keller-Williams Urban Center over on Turtle Creek (it used to be called the Center City office until it moved off of Lowest Greenville). He's LGNA's crimewatch chairman. He's at every meeting, hearing or event having to do with Lowest Greenville. He has made his displeasure with BD and the Bailey home very clear in Board of Adjustment meetings and on the Dallas Observer blogs.

BD is not surprised Dattalo is crowing about BD's move, but did he not think BD would see said crowing? The graphic below was pulled from Darren's Facebook page just last week. In it, you see BD's house, as photographed from outside the fence, BD's borrowed moving truck and the moving team taking a break from the heat.

Update, Friday August 9 - Melissa deleted the email / post from the Belmont Addition page at NextDoor.com early this morning.

BD has heard about Welcome Wagons for people who move into a neighborhood (if you move into Belmont Addition, prepare for a complete background check and financial review). But this is the first time he's seen someone get so excited about people moving out of a neighborhood.

She did not know BD was a member of the NEXTDOOR.com Belmont Addition page. Melissa has refused to put BD back on the Belmont Addition's mailing list since (which she controls with an iron finger) last May, so she assumed BD was completely cut off from the neighborhood grid.

An update from the front in the War of Lowest Greenville: The forthcoming Blind Butcher restaurant can stay open until 2 am. Sort of.

On July 25, the Dallas City Plan Commission agreed with Blind Butcher's owners about the hours of operation for the inside and front patio. But it also accommodated some nearby residents regarding the hours on the back patio by decreeing that it shall close at midnight.

Therefore, on August 28, Blind Butcher owners Matt Tobin and Josh Yingling, who also own Goodfriend Beer Garden and Burger House, will ask the Dallas City Council to overrule the commission's recommendations about the back patio. That's also about when the Blind Butcher is scheduled to open.